Memories
by Ryuuatsu
Summary: Takuya's memories of last October are full of holes. He knows he met someone that changed his life, but he can't remember who it was anymore. Oneshot. No pairings. Full of spoilers.


When Takuya tried to remember last October, he realized that at some point during that month his memory had gotten spotty. September was easy to remember, not that he wanted to think about it. He remembered getting his money stolen behind Ms. Matsumura's back in Literature class, and getting shoved down flights of stairs in the back hallways of school, and making up illnesses to go tell Ms. Hino about over lunch, just because her office was a safe haven from the bullies.

November was just as clear. He remembered each of the kittens he found in the dumpster behind Triple Step vividly, and he remembered all the hard work he put into getting them healthy again. He remembered Sayuri lamenting to him about Pumpkin Witch closing, and he remembered the school festival like it happened yesterday.

October was different. He remembered certain events and certain details, but there were always holes in his memories. He remembered getting harassed by his usual attackers in the hallway early in the month, and he remembered Akira Mido saving him. Takuya knew he was talking to someone before it all happened, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember who it was. He didn't have an abundance of friends. There were very few people it could have been, and when he thought back on it, none of them seemed to be who he had been talking to. Whoever that person was, they had just become an empty space in his mind he couldn't fill, and it bothered him.

It wasn't just that one memory that had holes in it, and that was what really concerned Takuya. There was someone he talked to, someone that made him feel better. There was someone important in his life, that gave him hope, that helped him feel less miserable and alone. Someone completely changed his life, but now they were gone from his memories, and he was left with nothing but the events surrounding the holes in his memories, and the emotions left behind.

Sometimes he thought about it so much he couldn't get to sleep at night. Sometimes he wondered if there was something seriously wrong with his brain.

His parents told him not to worry about it so much, and to stop thinking about it. "That's normal," his father told him one night over dinner, "I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning." Takuya didn't mention that whatever he was forgetting was much more important than breakfast.

He talked to Ms. Hino about it after school on a sunny afternoon. He stared at her fish tank instead of looking at her while he spoke, because he was a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Her response was better than the one he got from his parents. "It's just stress," she told him with a smile, "October was a rough month for all of us. Three of your teachers died, after all. You had a lot to deal with."

Takuya went home and ended up dwelling on it all night again. Whether or not it was just because of how stressed he had been back then, it still bothered him. He still wanted answers he had no way of getting. He didn't sleep well that night.

Eventually he got up the nerve to tell Sayuri about it, one evening they were both getting ice cream at Jardin. They sat at a back table, and Sayuri quietly heard Takuya out as he stared down into his ice cream and rambled on about every single instance of that void in his memories. He looked up at her again once he was finished, and she seemed lost in thought for a moment before she responded.

"I think I have that problem too," she said, taking another spoonful of her ice cream, "There's times where it seems like someone should have been there, but I can't remember anyone. It's like… for the longest time I thought we had a transfer student, but obviously we don't."

Takuya didn't have any memories at all of a transfer student. "Really? I don't remember a transfer student." He couldn't remember a single detail about the person missing from his memories. They could be a transfer student, but a transfer student should still be around, and Takuya didn't have one in any of his classes. If there ever was one, Ms. Hino would have known them and remembered them, but she didn't mention one as the potential missing person when they spoke about the memory loss earlier.

Sayuri shook her head and smiled. "There wasn't, my memory is just bad. If it's from stress like you said Ms. Hino told you, that explains it. That's around the time I was attacked, after all."

Takuya finished his ice cream, and set the spoon down on the table. "Yeah, it's probably just stress. There probably wasn't anybody there at all."

The more he told himself that, the easier it was to accept. But that didn't mean the feeling of something important being missing ever went away.

* * *

I really like Takuya. : And I think it's depressing to think of all the people that wouldn't have gotten their memories of Atsuki back. So here's this.

X-posted to my LJ and Ao3. Thank you for reading!


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